Shepard Ascendant
by VorkosiganClone
Summary: What if the Collectors had retrieved Shepard's body instead of Cerberus?
1. Prologue

This started out as a prompt on the Kmeme:

_Let's say for a moment that the Collectors are successful in capturing Shepard's body after the destruction of the SR1. They of course do the sensible thing and take his body back to their base and throw him into the Reaper they just finished building, using the Commander as the "Heart" of the new Reaper, choosing the Paragon of Humanity to form the deepest core of of their latest Harbinger class Super-capital._

_In hindsight, this was not the wisest of moves._

* * *

**Prologue**

The first thing he heard was hissing. After than, a barely audible thrum that felt like it was vibrating through his bones. It felt like he was drugged and strapped down. His eyes stubbornly refused to open. The last thing he remembered was blacking out from a cracked O2 hose over Alchera. What had happened? The Normandy had been the only ship in the system, so who had picked him up? How long had he been out?

Suddenly, it was as if light flooded him from all angles. It disoriented him for what felt like a few seconds, but soon he could 'see'. He was in a room with sickeningly organic sections melded onto bare metal. So, not a hospital. Or not one that he'd ever enter willingly.

Then he looked down. Tiny creature scuttled around him. He looked harder, and it was as if his vision zoomed in. The creatures looked like insects, but he'd been wrong about their size. They were the size of humans. Which meant...

It wasn't a room. It was a cavern. But if so...

He then tried to look further down at-.

No.

No.

**NO.**

Black metal, shining with a strange iridescence. Sinuous curves. There was nothing human about it. In a rush, he knew what it was.

Something had made him a monster. No, a Reaper. How and why didn't matter. It had been done. He did the only thing that he could when faced with it. He screamed.

"**NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"**

Plates opened and a beam lanced out, blood red, cutting through the wall the cavern. He thrashed around in what had to be his moorings, tearing giant chunks out of the walls and raining them down on the creatures below.

The cables holding his...body? hull? snapped with his exertions. Through the hole in the wall, he saw open space.

It was instinctive. Low level processes maybe. Whatever it was, he _knew_ how to get away. More beams flew out, blasting a larger hole for him to crash through. The stone and metal scraped against him as he pushed through. Once out in space, he was assaulted by a cacophony of input. Heat, noise, chatter. He hunkered down inside himself, and the noise went away. He ran through the wrecks of countless ships, through the defenses, towards the relay he had found. The pinpricks of small beams against him, the bullying of wrecks out of his way - none of it mattered. Only escape, before these things could cocoon him again.

Moving faster towards the relay. It lit up like a Christmas tree when he neared, and he felt an echoing heat in what felt like his stomach. Closer, closer, and then blessed silence when he finally fell through it.

**-ooo-**

When he finally awoke, he was drifting through the gas clouds of a nebula. It was..peaceful. After a time, he came back to himself. Time to take stock. He wasn't supposed to be awake yet, of that much he was certain. Those...things, servants of the Reapers maybe, hadn't expected him to be aware. Maybe they had planned to finish indoctrinating him later. Maybe it hadn't taken. There were no voices whispering in his mind. Whatever the reason, he was sound in mind, if not in body. Speaking of which -

He turned his gaze inward. Yes, a Reaper shell. But not a complete one. He could feel things missing, like an empty ache inside him. He could..remember things, things he had no business knowing. They had to have installed... data banks, he supposed. But they weren't complete. History, where the Reapers came from...oh. Oh no.

Where the Reapers came from wasn't in his memory. How they were created **_was_**.

Thousands. Hundreds of thousands of humans had been melted down to create this Reaper. An evil synthesis of man and horror of it stunned him for an incalculable time. A great loathing welled up - was this what they had planned for the rest of humanity? Was he going to be encased in a shell of dead men, women, and children for all eternity?

No. He would not let this define him, change him. The Reapers would not win that easily. Mourn the fallen, yes, but then pick yourself up and continue the fight. Rage against the dying of the light if you need to, but never fall. Never falter.

The mission hadn't changed. Just the particulars. Stop the Reapers. Save the Galaxy.


	2. Planning

_Wherein I figure out how to italicize internal monologues. Also, I'm unsure how much time I'll be able to devote to writing for the next month - apologies in advance._

* * *

Stretching out what had to be comm arrays and sensors, Shepard **listened**. Corporate invasion of Garvug, celebrity gossip, Urban Combat League scores - the minutiae of a civilization. Useless to his needs, but it served to help him learn to filter out the extraneous information. More relevant information began to separate out. The _Destiny Ascension _completing a victory tour - not that it had actually _done_ anything during the Battle of the Citadel, but it did reinforce that the Council thought the threat was over. There was no news of any military build ups, no massive building programs. And no mention of the Reapers.

Public feeds weren't going to get him what he needed. It took time, and a number of comm buoy hops, but he was able to gain access to the Alliance intranet. The fact that his credentials hadn't been revoked was…surprising, but welcome.

He found it so much easier to process and categorize information now. He let it flow over him, and picked out the necessary pieces. However, the results were disheartening. The Alliance, even with faced with a ship that could annihilate a fleet, had officially come to the conclusion that the threat was over, and buried the matter. He found protesting memos from Admiral Hackett, and official correspondence from Anderson, but the rest of the brass seemed happy enough to bury their heads in the sand.

There was, however, a large uproar regarding missing human colonies. They fell out of communication, and when patrols were dispatched, they found only empty buildings and more questions. He knew, with a sick feeling, where the colonists had to have gone. Where they were now. What they were…now. No one had linked the disappearances to the Reapers, but he was living proof- well, he was proof at least, of where and what had been done. It was the only explanation that would make sense.

The information continued to flow, but something stood out. There had been another colony, Ferris Fields, abducted just recently. After he had escaped. _That means one of two things - either there was another base that the bugs were working out of, creating another Reaper from human beings- the sick feeling returned - or the base I fled from is starting again._

The bugs wouldn't have known what happened to him. Once a ship goes through a primary relay, it was almost impossible to track. Starting again might make a twisted sense, if they were preparing for their master's return from dark space. If they could get another Reaper built, fully functional this time, they could recapture him, indoctrinate him, and have him lead the charge against the galaxy. Again, it made sense...if you were a bunch of genocidal synthetics. _Hell, if they create even a half dozen, they could assault the Citadel and open the relay to dark space, letting all the rest through._ That was unconscionable.

_So, stop the bugs, then stop the Reapers_. The question, again, remained how. _I need allies._

And therein lay a major problem. No one would believe that the guiding force behind a Reaper shell was Commander Shepard. He needed a way to move undetected through the galaxy. Long range telemetry could spot his shell. He had hangers along his…flanks, but the mountings brackets were empty. _Let's see what else they've stuffed in this – in me._

There were what appeared to be limited manufacturing facilities on board, an armory, and at least one bay full of Dragon's Teeth. I should vent those into space. He didn't want to think too much about them, but it did spark an idea. To have an actual **body** – while there was no way we could distill himself out of this shell, he might be able to create an avatar to pass through organic society. To feel like a human again.

The avatar plan had some drawbacks - major ones. The fact that he would be puppeting the avatar would leave his Reaper body vulnerable. Not only due to splitting attention, but what had happened to Sovereign. If the body was destroyed, he didn't know either how long it would take him to regain himself and bring up his shields. So, the priority would be to make it supremely combat capable. However, it would also need to be able to pass an examination. It would do no good if he couldn't prove his bona fides. It was possible to create and pilot a very basic skeleton – Sovereign had proved that. But it would only work if he could put a covering, a human body around it.

The thought of capturing, changing, and implanting another being was abhorrent to him. Even in the face of the Reapers, even in the face of galactic annihilation, there were lines that he was not prepared to cross. Otherwise, there was nothing separating him from the Reapers.

_There has to be a better way._

A more careful examination of the internals revealed some biological laboratories – probably for developing the Husks of a new cycle. They were, however, capable of flash cloning tissue._ If only I had my own – wait_. A DNA sequence was attached to all Alliance soldier records for identification purposes. He dived back into the Alliance intranet databases, and was relieved to see that his record, while inactive, still was tagged.

_Well, that's a first step_.

Cloning a body took some time, but by the end, he was experienced the very disconcerting feeling of looking at himself, lying on a slab. He had been examining the implantation techniques available – the unsettling thing was how little contemplating cutting into 'his' body was bothering him.

_What's happening to me? Am I losing bits of my humanity? What else will look perfectly reasonable the longer I'm…the new me?_

He still felt the overpowering urge to protect others, but how far would he go? The not wanting to implant someone else was a good meter stick for the moment, but he needed to either create a baseline, or surround himself with people who could function as touchstones for who he had been and who he wanted to be. _The old squad – Garrus, Tali, Liara-no, I need them, but I can't approach them immediately._ They would think him a monster. They would be right, but not in the way they imagined. Regardless, no one would believe that he was Commander John Shepard. How well the body was built would be the determining factor. Husks looked terrifyingly inhuman, but was that because of any inherent technology, or was that just to increase the terror factor against organic life?

A proper cover story to explain his body would be necessary, especially in convincing his old team to join him._ The best lies are the ones that only deviate slightly from the truth_. A little oddness he could pass off as...reconstruction. There wouldn't have been much left after asphyxiating _*shudder*_, freezing, and then burning up on reentry. The question then became why would he have a body? The bugs had obviously constructed his ship-self to either take the Citadel or lead an invasion. Only an untimely wakeup had cost them their new 'champion'. So, change the scale of the construction slightly. Instead of recreating a Reaper, say the bugs had wanted to recreate his body, indoctrinate him, and have him lead a Reaper invasion. Waking up early had prevented his indoctrination, but it had been after they had repaired his body. The escape would be more problematic - the safest bet would be to say he had escaped from one of their ships during a landing. It would call into question if he was already indoctrinated, but that was less of a challenge to overcome than explaining a dreadnought sized Reaper shell.

Which brought him back around to the body lying on the slab. He had been working on it while developing the story. Lyrics from an old song he'd heard on shore leave ran through his head as he examined the avatar. _Come touch me like I'm an ordinary man/have a look in my eyes/under my skin there is a violence/Got a gun in its hand_. It certainly fit. From the outside, there were almost no visible marks. The only thing that was outwardly different was the eyes. Still blue, but they _glowed_. He hadn't been able to completely eliminate that from the implants._  
_

Under the skin, though, was a much different story. In order to keep up the story of repairs by the bugs, he'd kept as much of the basic human body as he could. Even so, it was 60% cybernetics and implants. This body was supposed to go into combat, and he had seen no reason to make it easy on enemies to destroy and possibly cripple his ship-self. Bones had been strengthened with the same material his hull was plated in. Muscle insertion points had been reinforced, primary muscles thickened with synthetic replacements. Eyes were synthetic replacements, micro/macro zoom capabilities. A dermal weave made the skin extraordinarily hard to damage. All in all, the body presented a significant advantage in any combat situation.

The much harder things to fake were the normal signs of living. People were going to want to run medical scans on the avatar – while the heart was beating, making the body 'alive' required having the brain show the expected high level activity without actually waking up or creating a separate personality. _It's bad enough I've cloned myself - I'm not going to enslave another me as well. _

The answer, as it turned out, was biotics. While he had never had even the smallest hint of biotics in life, he had always seen their battlefield value. In examining the various communications arrays built into the hull, there was a device that had no Alliance analog. Once his attention was on it however, the interface burst into his forebrain. It was a biotic radio – one that could not only be heard over vast distances, but also could control specialized implants. Put those in key portions of the brain, and they not only controlled the body, but also mimicked the normal EEG waves. It wasn't an automatic process, but as long as he didn't lose the connection he could convincingly pass any scan. He hoped. _Now to see if I can actually move this thing._

It took some trail error, but he was finally able to move the body around his ship-self with something approaching familiarity. In fact, as he became more and more used to the body, he was able to increase most of the body's attributes to well above human norms. It could punch through metal plating, lift multiples of its body weight, and the reaction times were well above even Turian standards._ Going to have to be careful with that. I don't want to appear too much different at the outset._ It would be better to not advertise his 'upgrades' too publicly. Better still to keep them in reserve, in case there was a situation that required overwhelming force.

With that done, it was time to move on to the other important tasks: weapons, armor, transport, and an LZ.

* * *

_I'm always re-reading my sections before I put them out, but sometimes I go cross-eyed and miss a mistake or two. If you see something, please let me know - we only get better when shown our mistakes. This may require a few re-uploads :)_


	3. 2 Developing

**Chapter 2**

Husks didn't use armor, so he would either have to fabricate something from whole cloth, or acquire a set in some other way. Unlike the biological systems, there weren't any processes specifically tuned to armor creation – or at least none that he could feel. Oh, there were shield modules, which were both miniature and powerful, but he wasn't going to be able to put them into a non-existent armor suit. _I can't do anything about that at the moment. Something to come back to._

The firepower situation was more promising. The bugs had left disturbingly organic looking rifles in the armory, and he could feel weaponry fabricators in the manufacturing areas. However, there were no small-scale weapon plans or diagrams in the data banks._ Just one more thing that would have been loaded later_. _So, I've got small arms, but no armor. And – yes, no small craft._

Armor and a shuttle were major blocks, but not ones that couldn't be overcome. The shield generators were powerful enough that they could probably take a few rockets before going down, and the sight of a buck naked human running towards them firing a rifle would give most people pause. However, a little coordinated fire and he'd be down one avatar and dead in space for who knew how long.

Beyond a quick scan to ensure there was no traffic in the area, he hadn't really confirmed where he was. A little basic astrogation put him floating midway between the Arinlarkan and Kairavamori systems in the Omega Nebula. Beautiful, but empty. _Falling through the relay must have thrown me off any standard relay route. I didn't even know that was **possible**_**. **Coming to rest in interstellar space had its advantages, however - it would be almost impossible for any ship to stumble over him. But by the same token, there was nothing available to use.

_I need resources. Not just eezo and iridium, but finished materials – schematics, armor modules, small craft._ If he'd been in anything but a Reaper, he would have just found the nearest colony and requisitioned a shuttle and armor on Spectre authority. But with only the avatar and ship-self, things became much harder, if not downright impossible. He could _absolutely not_ let anyone see his shell. Which lead to some rather unpleasant thoughts and trains of logic.

_Ruthless calculus. I **need** at least a shuttle and basic armor, but I can't let anyone report that they've seen a Reaper – or even another 'Geth Dreadnought' - or the Council will hunt me down without pause. And I can't get close to a colony without them reporting back. That leaves me with destroying an entire colony, to the last man and camera. And **that **__is so far beyond the pale that I won't even consider it. _

He wrestled with it. Human Shepard, Savior of the Council, who always had time to help those along the way, would never even think about it. Reaper Shepard, sitting in the middle of space, could coldly analyze it.

_Wait, I'm going about it wrong. The requirements are armor and a shuttle, and not being detected. An absolute is that I don't kill innocents. A colony would have those and more, but I don't need anything else. _Why had his mind immediately jumped to taking out an _entire colony just for a shuttle_? Was there something in the Reaper that was changing him? Had they – no. _I was just concentrating on the missing colonies. It's easy to get locked in on that. _It was still worrying, however.

To go about it a different way: Who both had these resources and would better the galaxy for not being in it? Simple – slavers. He was in the middle of the Terminus. You couldn't swing a frigate without finding a slaver…

Suddenly, the answer to his dilemma presented itself. Runaway slaves in the Arinlarkan system were often preyed upon by pirates and bounty hunters looking to take them back to former masters. Scum, in other words. People he would have only grudgingly given a chance to in his previous life, and sometimes not even then. Hitting one of them, especially if the base was small and trying to hide anyway, would get him at least scrounge armor, if not a working shuttle. Even so, it seemed a workable solution to the problem. No innocents harmed, resources gathered, and the galaxy would be a slightly cleaner place without those particular slavers preying on people.

_I may even **enjoy** wiping out some slavers. No moral ambiguity here. Just a surgical strike to get what I need. _He'd been trying to sublimate the emotional reactions to his situation by forging forwards, but taking out the rage and frustration on some deserving targets was _very_ attractive. _And getting more practice with my weapons systems won't hurt either. _

So, the new plan: Find a small slaver base, take out the comm arrays from distance, land, and then go through the base to get armor, supplies, and a shuttle. Then take off and blast the site from orbit - the only way to make sure that there was nothing left to identify him.

**-ooo-**

"Sir, I've found something interesting."

"What is it, Miranda?"

"I had a network monitoring agent set up on Shepard's personnel file. Besides routine inquires, no one had tried to access it in over a year. Until today, when there were multiple record pulls."

"That's unusual, but not necessarily interesting. Why are you bringing this to my attention?"

"Because of the location those requests came from. The tracking software could only follow it so far, but the carrier signal was coming from between stars. In the Omega Nebula."

"You think it has something to do with our…friends?"

"Yes sir, I do. It's a hunch, but I'd like to take a team and investigate."

"Very well. Keep in contact and report your findings. I put you in charge of the Holmes Cell for a reason – find me something that leads to Shepard."

* * *

_I know this is a very short chapter, but it seemed like a logical break point. The next one should hopefully be a bit longer. The story keeps unfolding in my head - I hope you'll enjoy some of the places I'll be taking it. And please - let me know if something isn't making sense or seems jumbled.  
_


	4. Surprises

**Chapter 3**

He covered the distance to the Arinlarkan system in mere hours.

_This...__**I**__ am insanely fast._ Even the Normandy, with its Tantalus drive core, could only do fifteen light years in a day. He was at least fifty percent faster than that. _And I don't know what I'm running off of, but I don't feel any fuel tanks. _ And of course, there was nothing in the databanks that suggested what the drive was or how it worked. _Something to look into once I've got some time. I'll also need to go through them thoroughly to find what I've got or what I'm missing. If I can ever get a trusted engineer to take a look at the engines, it would revolutionize space travel._

And then he made the connection. Infinite or near enough fuel. No crew to resupply.

_Oh god. The Reapers don't __**need**__ the Citadel to still attack. If they've had enough warning, they could attack the __**hard**__ way. The Citadel just makes it more convenient for them. _The thought electrified him. If Sovereign had gotten a message to them – or if the bugs had – the Reapers could be on their way now. The thought paralyzed him for a moment.

_Ok, lets think about this. They wouldn't have put the other end of the relay anywhere near the galactic rim – too much of a risk for an adventurous species to discover. Which means that even if they are fifty percent faster than I am and started when I killed Sovereign, they could have covered about twenty thousand light years. Since they aren't here yet, and there were no long range telemetry reports, either they started from farther out or they haven't given up on the Citadel yet._ Regardless of which scenario it was, time was not on his side. It never had been, and the immediacy of the problem hit him hard. _I can't let it make me lose focus. Just keep going, one step aft..well, I guess that doesn't really apply anymore. _He remembered a line from a vid shown during one of the crew night on the Normandy. _I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Ok, put it out of your head for the moment. _

With that thought, he returned his attention to the tasks at hand. Firstly, making sure the avatar was fully combat ready, and then finding a suitable target. The rifles in the armory didn't just _look_ organic, they felt like it too. The firing stance took a brief adjustment, but after that it was similar. It seemed to fire slower than an Lancer, and overheated faster, but was much more accurate. _So, long distance with short bursts, got it. Now, defenses_.

Mounting a shield generator on a naked human – _Yeah, I need to rectify that situation posthaste. Thank god I can turn off sensations like cold, or this would be even worse _- was not an easy task. He had to resort to gluing the emitters to the avatar's skin and looping some wires around the waist to hold the generator behind him.

_It's not elegant, and won't last through much combat, but should let me at least take out enough that I can get an undersuit and armor. I should be able to modify the armor to accept the new generator when the avatar is back aboard. _

By the time he had gone through all of the checks on the emitters and familiarized himself with the bug assault rifle, he was approaching the Kupier belt. _While they might not have any sensors pointing here, there's no need to give them an opportunity. _By hitting a system in the Hegemony's sphere of influence, he was doubly protected. They didn't talk much with Council races, especially after withdrawing their embassy thirty years ago in protest over human expansion. Even if they were to think something amiss, they wouldn't bring in anyone outside the Hegemony to investigate. Add the fact that they, out of all the major races, hadn't had access to military sensor recordings of Sovereign, and even if they could piece something together from sensor fragments, it wouldn't mean much. _I still shouldn't make it easy for them. _

Most sensors would be short range and aimed at plane of the ecliptic. An approach from the 'north' of the system would allow him to stay hidden until he was right on top of the base. He would have to take out their comm array before anything else – a distress call would scrap his entire plan.

Now, it was time to find base. The only patrols that came through the system were batarian, and infrequently at that. The outposts certainly weren't going to worry about them – they were returning slaves to Hegemony worlds or bringing new ones in. As a result, they didn't bother with enforcing more than a cursory shielding of their emissions. It was simple enough to find a small outpost on the outer edges of the asteroid belt.

_I usually have a squad backing me up – I'll need to make sure I don't bite off too much. Just get in, get armor and a shuttle, and then blast the base and run. _

-ooo-

He should have expected that it wouldn't have been just a simple smash and grab.

Oh, the initial part had gone off without a hitch. There were no patrol passing through the system, and a giant beam came stabbing out of the darkness, destroying the comm array. _Nice of the scum to set that up as a separate part of the base_. They hadn't gotten off any distress calls that he could detect.

The asteroid was a large one, but they base had to have shook when he landed on it. A massive leg bashed against the hanger bay, knocking the protective doors away and leaving only the air shield to prevent a full blowout. _Have to be careful I don't knock out the generators until I get some armor on the avatar. _A tiny panel on the very tip of the leg blew off, and it entered the hanger. Up until this point, he'd been able to split his attention, but from here on out it he'd have to devote almost all his concentration to the avatar. _Well, here goes nothing._

It was…odd, after so much time getting used to the Reaper shell, to be thrown back into a human body with limited senses. Controlling it with split attention was nothing like actually inhabiting it again. His introspection was cut short by gunfire from the other end of the hanger. _Get your head in the game, Shepard. _

There were three slavers at the end of the bay, two humans and a turian. He cut one of the humans down almost immediately. The turian and the other ducked behind some stacked crates. He slid into cover behind a generator, and heard fire pinging off it. _Damn I miss having a HUD. No way to tell if they're trying to flank. Although…there's nothing except the barriers to tell them where I am. They're probably having the same troub_le.

Combat maneuvers while stark naked weren't the most comfortable of things, but the shields hadn't gone down. He popped the rifle over the top of his cover and fired a burst toward the turian's last position, just to keep his head down. He snuck around to the left of the generator and saw a row of crates stretching the length of the bay. The human had had the same idea, and was moving up. A quick burst took him down.

A quick peek showed the turian, now facing equal odds, trying to slip out of the back of the hanger. _Not so fast._ Another burst to the back, and it was over. _Neither of them had shields. Guess the slaving business doesn't pay so well. _Gratifyingly, there was a shuttle parked off to the side of the bay. _Only one, though…it doesn't make much sense for slavers to have only one. The other one must be out on…business. Speaking of which - time to attend to mine._

-ooo-

Kyren Reegios had been in this cell for weeks. _I should have gone out fighting, like a good turian would._

The ground shook. _Not a good sign on an asteroid_. A minute later there was another pulse. _That's not natural, that's an assault. _ Adrenaline began to dump into his bloodstream. _I'm valuable, but not valuable enough for the company to ransom, much less launch an assault. So that means either other pirates, or the slavers annoyed one of the militaries. _One would be good, the other very, very bad. The only reason that was still alive and relatively intact was that the slavers were hoping Haliat Armory would pay ransom for one of their designers. So far, nothing from the home office.

_Well, whoever it is, there's not much I can do until this cell opens._

-ooo-

_Well, they're being downright accommodating. First putting the comms and sensors in an easy spot, now with the credits and armor. _ It seemed that mercs and pirates hadn't changed in the last two years, and still left equipment and credits either lying around or in easily hacked wall safes. Especially easy for someone with the processing power Shepard had. The commander's office had held a set of Terminus armor – he had only heard about it before now. _Lucky for me he was human – it would have been rather uncomfortable trying to fit into asari armor. And impossible to fit into turian. _Modern armor was both modular and could be customized in the field to fit the wearer. It was the work of a few minutes to find a skinsuit that was close to fitting. Integrating the shield generator took only a little longer. _I guess it's a good thing the other shuttle was out. There haven't been all that many slavers_ _to burst in on me while I'm vulnerable._ Once the shields had been replaced and the armor fitted, it was time to finish clearing the base and collect whatever supplies were needed.

-ooo-

_Whoever they are, they're certainly taking their time. _After the initial shocks, there had only been a few intermittent bursts of what had to be gunfire. But for the last quarter hour, nothing._ Can't be a large force - either military or pirate would have been through here by now. Which leaves…commando squad? mutiny? Neither are really great options for me either. _There wasn't much in the room that he could defend himself with – and nothing in the cell besides his spurs and talons.

Suddenly, the door unlocked and a strange, sinuous rifle poked in, followed by a human in black and orange armor. He made a quick scan of the room, but stopped abruptly when he caught sight of Kyren.

-ooo-

_Well. A prisoner. I suppose I should have expected that in a slaver base. Nothing for it - just another person on this base I'm going to have to eliminate to make sure. He's just one- _

**_No! _**Shepard felt queasy. The thought had just…slipped in. He was so shocked that he lost control of the avatar for a moment.

-ooo-

_Why is he just standing there? _The human had frozen when he saw Kyren, and was standing perfectly still.

"Hello? Who are you?"

-ooo-

"-are you?"

A split second decision. _ My name is John Shepard. I'm an officer in the Alliance Navy. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. You help prisoners. You don't kill them because they are inconvenient. _

"I'm Commander Shepard."

* * *

_Yes, I'm still writing this. Sorry for the delay – who knew that buying a house, moving, and furnishing it would utterly drain my creative juices for a few months? Anyway, thanks for reading!_


End file.
